Marilyn Strauss, founder of KC’s Heart of America Shakespeare Festival, dies at 91

Marilyn Strauss, former Broadway producer, Tony Award winner, and founder of the Heart of American Shakespeare Festival in Kansas City, died Saturday at 91.

For decades a tenacious and powerful champion of theater, Strauss had made her name as a successful producer in New York before returning to Kansas City in 1990 to found the Shakespeare festival.

Conceived from the start as an outdoor production, free to all, the festival has remained so for 26 years under Strauss’ guidance, and continues. Festival leaders now carrying the organization forward say 750,000 people have attended the festival since it began.

“I think it far exceeded her dreams even,” said Gayle Price Krigel, whom Strauss referred to as her BFF — best friend forever. “What touched her most was that so many children had participated in the educational programming.”

In recent years, Strauss had handed over day-to-day operations to others but remained on the festival’s board with an active voice. She suffered a stroke last year and died Saturday evening, friends said.

“It’s a passing of someone you don’t see every day,” said R. Crosby Kemper III, an early backer and first board president of the Shakespeare Festival. “Giants walk the earth … to the community, there’s a hole now. We’ll fill it somehow.”

Born in Detroit in 1927, Strauss moved to Kansas City as a teenager. Later, after marrying and having three children, she got her first experience on stage at the Jewish Community Center’s Resident Theatre, according to her obituary.

As an entrepreneur, Strauss began producing fashion shows and started a styling and marketing agency. In 1979, she produced the Leonard Bernstein Festival with Kansas City Philharmonic music director Maurice Press.

By this time, Strauss had divorced her first husband and married Leonard Strauss, owner of a Kansas City cold-storage business. She started spending more time in New York.

In New York, Strauss employed her wits and determination to break into theater producing on Broadway, where she had a 12-year career. She won a Tony Award for best producer/best play for the Irish drama, “Da.” The play ran for nearly two years, from 1978 to 1980.

The industry, however, underwent a change. Independent producers like Strauss were increasingly replaced by larger companies.

With the encouragement of the late Joseph Papp, founder of the New York Shakespeare Festival, Strauss returned to Kansas City to found a festival here.

Strauss built the festival from scratch, working the phone and running from meeting to meeting to drum up support from civic leaders. She partnered with Felicia Londré, curators’ professor of theater at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, who became an honorary co-founder of the festival.

Strauss persuaded actor Kevin Kline to come to Kansas City to perform an evening of Shakespeare monologues for the festival’s first fundraising event in 1990.

Turning the festival from an idea to a reality took guts. But Strauss had that, her friends say, and she inspired others to follow.

When the inaugural performances of the festival faced torrential rains, the actors volunteered to perform under the downpour. Appropriately, the play that year was “The Tempest.”

“Marilyn was a trouper, and she communicated that to everybody,” Kemper said. “She could be tough. Occasionally willful.”

The show went on, and continues. The festival remains free of admission and outdoors, with performances each summer in Southmoreland Park. Strauss never drew a salary.

It was important to Strauss that the performances would be of high quality and that festival would make Shakespeare’s work accessible to members of the public who might not have the money to buy a theater ticket, and whose education might not have exposed them to these plays.

Along with the festival, Strauss leaves a legacy as a leader who, once possessed of an idea, pursued it heedless of obstacles or naysayers.

“She was a force. She’s a great poster woman for ‘just do it,’” said Sidonie Garrett, the executive artistic director of the festival. “As a female producer and arts leader, it was really key to my feeling that I could do that job she left behind.”

Strauss’ favorite Shakespeare play, Garrett said, was “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” That was partly because of the magic, joy, romance and humor of the play but also because of how much the audiences enjoyed it.

From that play comes the line: “And though she be but little she is fierce.”

“That is what I think of when I think of Marilyn,” said Strauss’ friend Krigel. “She is small in stature, but she is fierce about everything she does. And she’s got that sassy red-headed attitude.”

Strauss once confided to Krigel that her goal was to be be different.

“She didn’t want to be like everybody else. And she wanted to make an impact on her community,” Krigel said.

Services for Strauss will be held at 10 a.m. Tuesday at Louis Memorial Chapel, 6830 Troost Avenue, with burial in Rose Hill Cemetery. Immediately following will be a celebration of life at the Kansas City Young Audiences building, 3732 Main Street.

This story was originally published September 16, 2018 at 4:10 PM.